Under the Twin Suns
by MoKidd
Summary: Aden Malro watched his family die, murdered by a Hutt's hired killers. Found in the desert by a mysterious stranger and raised to fight like a Jedi and shoot like a bounty hunter, he has lived with a burning desire to seek out vengeance on those responsible. Now his old mentor is leaving to seek out an old enemy, leaving him to seek out his own demons.
1. Chapter 1

I remember it like it was yesterday, every last detail. Funny how something that happened almost fifteen years ago could be so burned into my mind when so many other things have fallen away. Then again, it was the day that my life changed forever.

I don't remember much about my mother and father, but what I do remember is that my mother was short, slight, had dark hair, and always smelled of cooking oils and incense. She had a laugh that would light up our little farm as if it were some kind of sweet music that pushed away the heat, boredom, and dreariness of our little moisture farm. It wasn't much of a farm, at that, just the house and the little shed where we kept our tools and the little machinery that Dad used around the farm, the bunkhouse where our seasonal hands would sleep when they came in for the summer harvest, and the underground shelter where we kept our droids. We never had very many of those. We had an R2 unit that handled the minor repairs around the place on the house or the moisture vaporators and a repair droid that helped out Mom around the house and helped Dad with his speeder. There was also a corral where we would keep livestock sometimes.

I used to like going away from the house with my old peashooter and crawl back into the rocks, playing Tusken Raider or Stormtrooper and occasionally bringing back some little critter for dinner. Sand People were a threat if I ventured out very far from the house, but I was careful to stay within a quarter mile most of the time. Our farm sat on the very edge of the Jundlnad Wastes and was surrounded by high outcroppings of dark rock that looked like the edges of an upright saw. There were dry watercourses where natural water had once flowed in the long-forgotten past, but they were all bone dry and petrified now. Dad and I had hunted all over those hills since I was old enough to hold a rifle and so I knew every nook and cranny for miles around. There were trails where Sand People had once traveled back before the homesteaders started coming in and farther back in the mountains were more trails where they still rode their huge banthas out on raids or hunts.

I was out playing when I heard the speeders come up to the house. I had been running around the rocky ridges and saw-backed hills all day with my little peashooter, taking practice shots at small pebbles and whatever little insects or animals that crossed my path. Dad said that I was one of the best shots he had ever seen and I was determined to get better. I didn't recognize the sound of the speeders, and I knew the sound of every one of our neighbor's speeders by heart, so when I heard them come up out of the Wastes I was immediately curious. Visitors were rare at our farm and they were always a welcome change to the monotony of life in the desert. Our nearest neighbor was a good ten miles away and the nearest settlement, Mos Espa, was an easy four hours' ride in a speeder. I gave up playing and ran down the narrow trail that led to the rocky shelf above our house, and when I came out on the crest of the ridge and looked down at the house I froze in my tracks.

Down in the flat and beside our house there were three speeders, two bikes and a larger speeder car that would easily hold five or six men, and in front of them were five men in rough clothing, all of them armed, and in front of them was my father. He was taller than all but one of the men in the group, towering over them at his above average height, and his dark, thick hair hung loose at his shoulders and his white clothing standing out over the earthy tones worn by the others. Even at six years old I could tell that these were dangerous men, but my father stood there in front of them with his feet spread wide apart and his arms hanging at his sides. I crept closer, keeping under the cover of the rocks, and for the first time I saw that my father was also armed. My father armed? I could never remember him carrying a blaster, or even a knife or any weapon at all aside from the belt knife he used for chores, but there he stood with a fine black gunbelt around his hips and two exquisitely made blaster pistols hanging in low-slung holsters at his thighs. The handles were white and they seemed almost to shine when I looked at them.

The five men stood a few yards away from him and started to form a sort of half circle in front of him, but he took a step to the side and shouted something at them that made them stop in their tracks. I couldn't hear what was said until I came closer and crawled my way through the rocks and sparse brush to within earshot.

None of the men down on the flat had seen me, or at least didn't give any indication that they saw me, and I looked from one to the other as they spoke. Three of them were human, a big man with a bald head that shone in the sun and two others that were leaner and dressed in the same kind of garb that I had seen Hutt henchmen wear around town. The big man had a greasy beard and was dressed all in black and when I saw his face I wanted to look away. He had a fierce look to him, steely hard eyes that seemed to look straight into my soul, and something about his voice made my skin crawl. The other two were different. There was a Rhodian with a milky eye that had an ugly scar across it, and the fifth man was a Tusken Raider. It took me a minute to recognize him for what he was, it was one of the few times that I had ever seen a Tusken without their head wrappings. He dressed and walked like a common man and wore a blaster holstered on his hip, but slung over his back I could see a gaffi stick.

Never in all my life had I known my father to either pack a blaster or to use harsh language, but now there he stood in front of five hard men and he seemed to not even by bothered by it. He spoke to them the same way he did when he was scolding me for forgetting some chore or breaking one of Mom's good dishes at dinner, albeit with a bit more color in his speech.

"Just what the hell do you think you're doing here? Speak up now or else get your asses off my property and be damn quick about it!"

"Pipe down, Malro," the big man said to him, "you know who sent us and you know what we want. Just come along with us and there won't be any trouble."

"And my wife and boy?"

"Oh, we'll take good care of them, Malro. Don't worry your head about that. You still married to that sweet little taste from Anchorhead? I would love to get a piece of . . ."

"You watch your filthy mouth, you snaggle-toothed bastard. One more word about my wife and I'll drop you where you stand."

"You may get me, but you'll never get the rest of these boys. Jensen here is almost as good as me and Rak'Ja over there is more than a fair hand himself. Gardulla only hires the best. You know that."

"Maybe they'll get me, but I doubt it. Either way you'll still be the first one to die. That Tusken over there goes second. After that whoever wants to can throw their hat in the ring and we'll just let the chips fall where they may."

"Just get your shit and get in the speeder, Malro! Gardulla is not a patient woman!"

"And I'm not a patient man, either. I've had just about enough of you and this little bunch of rabble that you brought with you. Now I want you all to get on your speeders, get on back to where you came from, and tell Miss Gardulla that I'm not and never will be interested. That's my final answer and it is final."

"We were hoping you would say that. Gardulla said that we were to bring you back any way we could. Like I said, get your water-seeder ass in that speeder!"

His hand dropped for his blaster and I almost cried out to my father to look out, but then Dad's hands flashed in a movement so swift that I could barely register it in my vision and all of a sudden those two shiny pistols were in his hands and held ready at arm's length. One of them was trained on the big man's chest, the other was pointed at the Tusken. He had been reaching for his gaffi stick and his hand had just touched the wooden shaft of the weapon when he froze in place and looked down the cold black muzzle of my father's blaster. Those other three stood stock still, as if frozen in place, and no one dared to make a move. That big man's face was red and even boy that I was I could see the seething hatred that was there. He wanted to draw in the worst way but he knew that such a move would be the end of him. As for myself, I had never been more proud of my father. He stood there with those guns on them and he never even batted an eye.

"Last chance, asshole. Get the hell off my land. All of you."

They didn't like it. No sir, they didn't like it one bit. They had come to do scare a simple farmer, or so I thought, and now they were staring down a man that wasn't afraid to face them armed and who could and would shoot them down without a thought. I had seen my father face down crazed banthas and stand ready rifle in hand to fight off a krayt dragon that we heard down in the canyons one time, but never before had I seen him more ready to stand up to trouble than I did right now. I couldn't help but smile as I watched from my hidden perch. If I'd had a better weapon than that old airgun then I would have lent him a hand.

That big man muttered something under his breath and turned back toward the speeders, followed closely by the others. Dad didn't move or speak. He stood there, guns up and ready, and watched them go toward their vehicles with what seemed like little interest. He still hadn't moved at all and those two fancy blasters were still up and ready. The five of them started toward the speeders and it was obvious that they didn't feel like giving up so easy but none of them wanted to buck a high-powered blaster pistol at that close range. They were tough men that knew too much about weapons to take them lightly.

To this day, I still don't know where the shot came from. My eyes had been riveted to the scene unfolding below me and to the men that were going back to their speeders and therefore I didn't know or see where the sound of the rifle came from or where the shooter was hidden. All I know is that Dad sank to his knees a second after the gun sounded and by the time the sound of the rifle had lost itself in the infinite loneliness of the desert he had fallen on his face and there was a growing pool of red spreading out from under his belly. His pistols had fallen from his hands and laid in the desert sand, his hands clenching at the sand with an almost spasmodic rhythm. He didn't scream. His eyes were wide and his mouth gaped opened as if he were about to let out a blood-curdling scream, but there was no sound that I could hear. I had to cup a hand over my mouth and fight back the tears to keep myself from screaming. The five men turned around and sauntered over to my father and I saw the big man smile his ugly smile. They came over to him and said something over him that I couldn't make out and when he managed to lift his head up and face them he spat back at them and cursed them for cowards.

I wanted to run away. I wanted to get a weapon and shoot them all down like wamp rats. I wanted to see them all dead and bloody in the sand for what they had done. But I couldn't do any of that. I was just a boy with a airgun watching my father die. I watched them beat and kick him down in the bottom below my hiding place and I could hear the ugly thuds and cracks of the blows landing and the visceral grunts and yelps of pain that Dad let out as they beat him. I wanted to look away but at the same time I couldn't. I had to see it, I had to see them, I had to know their faces and their voices and their manners. I made an oath on the spot that these men would pay for what they had done and that I would be the one to make them pay even if it took me the rest of my days. My eyes watered over and my throat hurt from the effort of choking down the screams and the sobs until I doubted that I could ever speak again. I didn't think anything could be more horrible than what I had just seen, but then I heard my mother scream.

Immediately the five men's attention turned to the house and the source of the scream and even from the distance I could see the ugly look that came over their faces. The Rhodian with the dead eye drew his pistol and fired a bolt at the house, striking the wall a foot from my mother's face and sending a shower of sparks and debris everywhere as she ran back into the ,house. Four of the men ran for the house, laughing evil laughs and smiling those nefarious smiles that foreshadowed things to come. Only the big man in black remained. He stood over my father and picked up one of the white-handled pistols out of the dirt and hefted it in his hand, smiling at the balance and feel of it. Dad was looking up at him with more fire in his eyes than I had ever seen and I knew that he had been able to stand and fight that he would have torn that man in black limb from limb and laughed while he did it. The big man smiled down at him and I could see the hate and the sick pleasure in his eyes. The others were in the house now and I could hear Mom screaming and things breaking in the distance, muffled by the walls of the house, but I could hear what the big man said to Dad almost as clearly as if I had been standing right beside him when he said it.

"Nobody tells Gardulla no, Malro. Nobody."

He lifted the blaster and took aim, I heard the high-pitched whine and saw the red bolt pass between the gun and Dad's head, and then my father was dead. The screaming in the house stopped and there was a chorus of sadistic laughter from the four thugs that were now hidden inside the place that had been my home, and then there were more blaster shots and the flashes of red light in the windows. The Rhodian and one of the other men came out first, then the Tusken and the other man a second later. The Tusken finished belting on his pants and he still had that sick grin on his face. I've never wanted to kill a man more than I did at that moment. One of the men turned and lifted his blaster, fired twice into the house, and within a few seconds there was a glow of flames and the sound of crackling fire coming from within the little structure. They spread out then and went into the droid shack, shot the droids and disabled the farm equipment, then went to the shed and bunkhouse and set them alight.

It felt like hours before the five of them finally went back to the speeders and sped off into the desert once again, but from the time they first arrived to the time they left it couldn't have been more than ten or fifteen minutes. I sat and watched the speeders fade into the distance and become tiny dots against the infinite sea of sand and black rock, then finally disappear completely into the horizon. The tears flowed freely and I cried and cried and cried until I couldn't cry any more. My shirt was soaked with tears and my eyes and throat hurt from the effort of crying when I finally lifted myself up and stumbled down the slope almost an hour later.

He was barely recognizable. The blaster bolt had taken him right between the eyes and the superheated plasma had blackened his face and blown away most of his face, while the bullet hole in his chest was centered over one lung and the exit wound in his chest was almost the size of my hand. It had to have been made by a cycler rifle like the ones that the Tusken Raiders used. No one else used projectile weapons anymore and no other gun could make such a wound. His gunbelt and pistols were gone, taken by the big bastard dressed in black before he left. I could still see the look on his face as he fired the fatal shot into my father's head and the way that he had smiled when he stripped the belt from my father's corpse. I would never forget that smile, nor the way that he had laughed when he saw what the others had been up to. Going into the house was an effort. The fires that the thugs had started had already burned most of the furniture and all of the pretty drapes that Mom had spent so much time and effort making. Everywhere there were pieces of broken crockery and busted furniture that had been destroyed during the struggle. The only piece of furniture that remained standing was the table, the table where we had eaten so many tasty and peaceful meals after a good day's work, on which laid the body of my mother. I looked at her for only a second before I had to turn away to avoid losing the contents of my stomach.

She was splayed out on the table, on her back and her arms and legs spread wide across the table, and her entire body had been blackened by the fire. Her dress was in shreds and her face was covered in gashes and caked with dried blood. I didn't look any closer than that. I went into the bedrooms and found that nearly everything had been burned. The only thing that remained of my parents' things was the big metal chest that my father had kept in the corner. That had been strictly off limits to me and had been locked with a keypad lock and a key lock and had never been opened that I could remember. It was open now, though, and curiosity got the better of me. I looked inside and found a second gunbelt with a custom-made DL44 pistol in a low-hanging holster and a large fighting knife in a tooled sheath, plus two little pouches for spare power packs for the pistol, as well as a blaster rifle, a collection of papers and cased awards, and what looked like an old uniform of some kind. I didn't recognize the insignia on the shoulder. It looked like a motif of some fierce creature with curved tusks. I remembered a medallion that Dad had worn and when I went back to his body I found it still around his neck, bearing the same insignia as the uniform.

I wanted desperately to bury my parents, but the tool shed had been destroyed and the earth was much too hard for me to attempt to dig a grave, much less two. The men that had killed my family didn't seem to know that I was anywhere around, but there was no telling whether or not they would come back and finish the job or to make sure that no one came by to investigate. It was unlikely that anyone would. Ours was an isolated farm where few people ever came and even fewer traveled. The main roads were many miles away and it would have been too far out of the way for any traveler to just pass by. Of one thing I was sure, and that was that I could not stay here. I had to get away from this house, from this farm, from all of the terrible memories that were still so fresh in my mind. I had to get away from everything that this place represented as well as the dangers of the raiders returning and those posed by the desert itself. With this in mind, I took the rifle and gunbelt and put the old uniform and a few odds and ends of food from the ruined pantry into the old backpack that I would use what Dad took me camping, filled two canteens from the main vaporator, and struck out into the desert.

I don't know how long I was out in the wastes. My food was little enough and the water didn't last long at all. I was too young to know better and failed to ration it properly, so it was gone after the first day when it could have lasted me three days. I looked for the few natural water sources that Dad had told me about, but it was useless. Only the banthas, the wild eoopies, and the Sand People knew of those watering holes and it was nearly impossible to find them unless a man knew where to find them. I remember the thirst most of all. At first it was the normal hard thirst of a day without water, then the dry, burning, sandpaper feeling of a throat that is completely drained of all fluid moisture. Every breath was a labor, my throat cracked and felt almost like it was bleeding. I didn't dare speak for fear of the pain that it would bring. After a while the rifle became heavy and the backpack, empty now except for the old uniform, became a burden that I couldn't bear any longer. I took out the uniform and tossed the pack away, but kept the rifle and pistol. I was alone and this was Tusken Raider country, to say nothing of the five men that might even now be hunting me, and without them I would be as good as dead.

Somewhere along the line I must have collapsed. I don't remember falling exactly, just that one moment I was stumbling along with all the effort I could muster and the next I was on the warm sand just after sundown. That sand was searing hot during the day but at night when the temperature dropped to almost freezing it would retain some of its heat for at least a couple hours. The suns were down and the stars were shining brightly above me when I came to, but when I tried to get up I couldn't manage to even move or sit up. My throat hurt like it had never hurt before, my face and hands felt like they were on fire and had I not been so parched I might have screamed from the pain. I later found that they had been burned by the suns and the hot sand. I opened my eyes and looked over my right hand, stretched out to my side, and I could see the rifle and pistol belt. The clothes I couldn't see, so they must be somewhere behind me. It was starting to get cold now and I wanted those clothes for the warmth they would give but my muscles were too weak to reach for them.

Strange that a place that was so hot during the day could be so unbelievably cold at night, I thought, but that was the way of the desert. Always life was a struggle in the desert, for nothing in the desert could ever live without a great struggle to survive each and every day. The lack of water, the burning suns, the predators and enemies that could be waiting behind every rock, every dune, every bend of the trail all conspired to kill anyone and anything that wished to live in such a desolate, dangerous, unforgiving place. The animals and the people that lived there were always the hardiest sort, tough, strong, and resilient. They had to be. Such a place as this, such a planet as this, was a place where only the strongest survived and the weak left their bones to bleach under the scorching suns.

I laid there for I don't know how long. I remember the piercing cold of a long night, followed by the searing heat of a day that I doubt I'll ever forget. My skin was soon burned badly by the unforgiving suns and I prayed for night to come again so that it would cool me off again. I tried to crawl toward some kind of cover, but the nearest shade was fifty yards away in the lee of a cliff and would only last for another few hours. Somewhere along the line I slept again, waking after what might have been several hours. The suns had moved and the shade below the cliff was all but gone. At first I didn't know what it was that had awoken me, for I was sure that something had, and in the back of my mind I could just barely register a sound that hadn't been there before. It was a low murmur, or maybe a growl, and only after a minute or two did I realize what it was. It was a voice with an accent that I had never heard before, and he was kneeling over me.

The person speaking was on the side that I couldn't see, but he spoke softly and with a tone that put me at ease. I had every reason to suspect that it was an enemy, but there was something about him that made me feel safe, comfortable, at peace. He put a hand on my shoulder and I winced, bunching my shoulders as if he had struck me with a club. If my throat hadn't been so parched I might have screamed from the sudden shock of pain that went through me. My skin was so badly burned that even the slightest touch caused me agony. I heard him screw the top off of something and there was a cool, sweet touch on my cheek and something cold ran into my mouth. Never in all my life has water tasted so good. He didn't give me much, just enough to wet my tongue and lips and to put some moisture back into my skin. I was out of my head with thirst and I didn't remember much after that. I remember the feeling of being lifted off the ground and being carried, of the man's voice speaking in soft tones again, and of being laid down on something soft and warm. I slept deeply for a long time after that, one of the best sleeps I've ever known, finally waking in a warm bed in a room lit by a dung chip fire on the hearth. A man was kneeling near the fire and turning some kind of meat over the flames. There was a pot of something bubbling on a hook beside the meat. Something smelled amazingly good and suddenly I remembered how long it had been since I had eaten.

I tried to stand up, but when I tried to throw the blanket off I felt a shock of searing pain shoot through me and I found that every muscle was stiff and sore. I looked down at my hands and found that there were bandages on both of them and someone had put some kind of salve on the burns on my face and neck. There were blisters on the burns, but they were drained and looked almost healed. How long had I been out? The man by the fire heard me wince at the pain and turned to face me and for the first time I saw him clearly. He was a man of average height with a strong build, he was dressed in brown and tan robes of a kind that I had never seen, and his beard and hair were a light brown color and were well kept. That was odd, since beards weren't very common on a desert world like Tatooine.

He smiled and came over to the bed with a cup of broth, which I happily took and downed in two big draughts. He took the cup and went back to the fire, returning with a plate of more broth and some soup made from beans and tiny pieces of meat. I ate in tiny bites, for I had been hungry long enough to want to savor my food. A man, or boy, who has truly known hunger will never scarf down his food like people think. He picks at it, savoring every bit of it and taking only tiny bites until his shrunken stomach can accept more.

"Take it easy, young man," he said in that softly accented voice again, "you've had quite an ordeal. Another few hours out there and I doubt you would have survived. You're lucky that I found you when I did."

I started to answer him, but when I tried to speak my throat was still raw and it hurt to speak. The best I could do was to whisper a barely audible "thank you".

"I haven't been here long, my young friend, but I believe it is highly unusual for someone your age to be out in the desert on their own and getting into such predicaments. How did you come to be in such a desolate place and in such need? For that matter, why was a boy such as yourself traveling so well armed?" He gestured toward the corner of the room, where my rifle and pistol belt hung from two wooden pegs in the wall. "By the way, your rifle shoots a little off. It took me three shots to take down this wamp rat we're eating. Normally I don't like blasters that much, but in such an uncivilized place I find that it is an unfortunate necessity."

With more labored whispers and more than a few nods and hints from the bearded man, I managed to muddle my way through the story of what had happened back at the farm. It was painful to recount the events of that terrible day, but as I spoke I began to remember little details about it that I had never recalled before. I normally wouldn't have so open and up-front with anyone, being a shy child, but there was just something about this man that made me feel that I could trust him. After all, he could have killed me back there in the desert and no one would have been the wiser. Men often vanished in the Dune Sea or the Jundland Wastes and were never seen again. They just left one day for a ride, a job, or traveling on their way to this place or that and just dropped off the face of the planet.

The man in the robes sat in a homemade chair beside the bed and listened to my story, not saying a word but simply sitting and listening with a kind of quiet assurance. His expression was neutral and he did not seem to register any emotion as I spoke, but I could see that he was more than a little interested. When I had finished he went and got me a cup of water from a cistern across the house. Water was a rare thing out here and a precious resource, so to see him offer it to a stranger so casually was a new and interesting thing. I took the water and sipped it happily, noting the grace of the man's movements and the way that there seemed to be an almost fluid quality to his motions. He seemed in complete control of himself. There was no hesitation, no wasted movement, and a kind of calm serenity about him that was unlike anything I had ever seen before or seen since.

"Well, my boy," he said after I had finished my water, "you are safe now. You needn't worry about those raiders. Few people ever come this far into the Wastes and even fewer know it as well as I do. It is, in fact, the exact reason I came here. An old friend of mine once lived here and he told me much about this place and what it had to offer. You see, we are both running from something and we both have seen things that no one should ever see. We have that in common. If it pleases you, you may stay here as long as you like. If not, I can take you to Anchorhead and you can get a transport to Mos Eisley or wherever it is you would like to go."

"Thank you," I said with an effort, even after the cooling relief of the water, "by the way, I'm Aden Malro."

"Oh, of course, where are my manners? It is a pleasure to meet you, Aden Malro. My name is Obi-wan Kenobi, but you can call me Ben."

The suns were bright overhead when I opened my eyes again. The light was bright enough to make my eyes sting a little, even in the shaded confines of the shallow cave in which I had camped. There were many such caves in the Wastes, carved out of the living rock eons ago by some long-extinct water source that had turned to dust sometime in the most ancient past of the planet that I called home. For a moment I lay still, listening to the sounds of the desert before rising from my bed. It was a habit of many desert men and one that had served me well in the past. I could hear the quiet whisper of the sand sifting over the desert on the wind, the sound of my eopie nudging the sand and loose earth on which he stood for the little water and fodder that could be found, and the soft hum of the heating rod that served as my campfire.

Nearly twenty years had passed since the day that Old Ben, as most people knew him, had found me out in this very desert and brought me into his home. It had taken weeks for my burns to heal completely and to this day I still bore a few small scars from them, but I had changed a lot since that day. I stood six foot four in my socked feet, when I had socks, my skin was browned by years in the suns, and packed into my frame was about two hundred pounds of lean muscle. my shoulders were wide and my arms were thick and powerful, my waist was lean and narrow, and across my cheek was the line of a scar left by a Tusken's knife. My own knife hung from my belt, the same belt that I had worn every day since I had been big enough for it to fit around me. I still wore the same blaster pistol that had been my father's and his rifle was in the corner of the cave near my saddle and gear.

I went over to the tiny trickle of water that came out of the rocks in the back of the cave and with a cupped hand I lifted enough for a sip. It was cold and sweet, filtered by the sandstone to perfect purity, and I took a few sips before tearing open a ration pack for my breakfast. When I had eaten and stowed my heated rod, I took up my rifle and saddle and stepped out into the bright morning light. My mount was tethered near a damp place in the sand that might have promised water and fodder and I threw my saddle over him and cinched it down, then went back into the cave and dipped my handkerchief into the cool water before returning and wringing it out into his mouth. He savored the drink, not like he needed it. An eopie can go for up to two months without a drink if need be. I gave him the last of the water and tied the cloth back around my neck to conserve the coolness. I looked around at the endless expanse of seemingly barren sand that surrounded our little patch of mountains. The Jundland Wastes were a scattered string of rocky mountains that dotted the edge of the Dune Sea, jagged shoulders of black volcanic rock that looked like hell with the fires out and stood on edge like so many upright saws.

It was a day's ride back to Old Ben's house in its little hidden valley, although more like a day and a half by the way I would have to ride. There were trails through the hills and through the harder packed sand at the edge of the Dune Sea, but they were half-hidden by the drifting sand and were difficult to find unless a man knew where they were to begin with. Those trails were ancient by anyone's standards and were used by few other than the animals and the occasional hunter or traveler. It was the hunting that had drawn me here in the first place.

Ben didn't believe in using blasters or any weapon but that old lightsaber that he practiced with every morning, but I had never had any qualms about using them. I hadn't carried Dad's pistol for the first few years that I had lived with Ben, but I had practiced with it and with the rifle religiously until I was an expert in the use of both. Ben had taught me to fight and to meditate from an early age, although he had never taught me to use the lightsaber. He did teach me a few techniques with the knife, though, and I had picked up a few things over the years at the traders' rendezvous at Anchorhead and Mos Eisley. I had been hunting for dewbacks and wild eopies for hides, meat, and fresh mounts ever since I had been old enough to sit a saddle. I had taken Dad's old rifle out hunting for the first time when I was thirteen and taken my first dewback the first day. Old Ben had said that I could practice with the blasters as long as I could afford the power packs for them, so I had taken to hunting, trapping, and scavenging for money as well as trading with the Sand People tribes and the settlements and taking the occasional odd job in town for a few weeks or months before returning to the house.

I had become known around the towns as a tough man to tangle with and a dead shot with any kind of a weapon, reputation that I hadn't wanted but had come by honestly. I had been in my share of fights and done some damage around the cantinas, but it was nothing compared to what some of the rough types who came through Mos Eisley or Mos Espa had done. Old Ben often called Mos Eisley a "wretched hive of scum and villainy" and rarely allowed me to go there until I started venturing out on my own. It was only the last few years that I had ridden the far hills and gone to hunting the hills.

The weapons I carried were almost as well known as I was. Many of the older men around the settlements still remembered my father and the respect that he had shown for everyone that he'd had dealings with. The pistol I wore was the one that he had carried the few times he had belted on a pistol for a trip to town, a customized DL-44 with iron sights, a super-charged capacitor for added power, and bantha ivory grips engraved with his initials. The rifle was unique among the weapons I had seen, one of a kind on a planet where nearly every man went armed that could afford to do so. It was a Remchester M73 ion rifle with a circular receiver that housed the charging cycler. The cycler was actuated by a lever that served as the trigger guard. A small holographic scope served as a sight. The gun was amazingly accurate and the sight could be adjusted from zero to six times magnification and with it I had made shots out to more than fifteen hundred yards.

I rode the hidden trails and bantha tracks that threaded their way through the endless expanse of the desert and wound from one watering hole to the next. Most of the natural water of Tatooine was deep below the surface and came through at only a few select places. In some places the ground was thin enough that wells could be dug, such as at the town sites of Mos Eisley, Mos Espa, Anchorhead, and Tocshe Station and at some of the fortunate civilian homes such as Old Ben's. The Sand People knew of them and moved from one to the other as they migrated from one place to another in their constant search for food or during their summer raiding season. Most of the local tribes were friendly to the human population and I had hunted, traded, and lived with some of the bands that lived along the edge of the Sea, although the Jundland Wastes and the badlands beyond the edge of settled country were still home to hostile tribes and bands of renegades who would raid small farming settlements, farmsteads, and Jawa scavenging teams as they went from farm to farm peddling droids and scrap. Every now and then they would hit something big like a Jawa Sandcrawler or a Imperial Provincial patrol, but those attacks were rare and generally only occurred when a strong leader came out of the woodwork.

I rode all day through the desert, taking my noontime rest near a cluster of rocks that offered reasonable shade and concealment and after giving my mount an hour's rest I stepped into the leather and started down the trail again. I had meant to swing by toward the Lars place for the night, for they were known to be friendly to those traveling the desert and would give a man food and a bed. They were friendly folk, the Lars', and they had a son that I had been friendly with when we were youngsters. Luke was a nice enough kid, even if his head was in the clouds when it came to some things, and a few times we had palled around when I came in from a hunt or with Ben when we traded hides and meat for their produce. Their farm was a good distance from the Wastes and sat on a wide flat, but I had ranged farther out than usual in looking for game this time and felt like some company.

A man that rides into the desert carelessly is a man that had better be ready to face up to trouble at any moment. Danger lurked everywhere on the sands, for this was a dangerous planet that could kill a man in a thousand ways. A bandit's blaster, a dewback's bite, a bad step resulting in a broken leg or a busted ankle, quicksand that could swallow a man and mount in seconds, blinding sandstorms that could make a man lose his bearings so that he wandered around aimlessly until his supplies ran out. Knowing the trails and the places where a man could find food and shelter could easily be the difference between life and death for a far-riding man. Most farmers like the Lars' were sympathetic to travelers and drifters and so were known as good people who were not to be harmed.

It was almost dark when I finally came up to the house. Old Ben's house was unique in the Wastes, for he had built it with some otherworldly knowledge that I had never seen before. The main house had been an old cabin or mining house where some prospector or farmer had tried to make a go of it way back in the Wastes and come to some end that left his house empty. Ben had found it when he came to Tatooine and had chosen it for its isolation. Over the years he had added two more rooms to the house, repaired the old shed that had once been used to house tools and gear but now did for a storage space for our garden implements and the tack that we used with our riding stock, built a corral and a stable that held the stock, and on the little knoll that sat near the house we had built a rifle pit for when the Tuskens tried to raid us. Near the house was a small mine that we had done some digging in, although we hadn't found much. The hills surrounding the valley had some minerals in them, but the mine itself only had some copper.

I put up my eopie in his stall and put some feed in the bin, stowed my gear in the shed, then went into the house. The heavy door creaked on its hinges and the room was cold after the long cool night, and the room smelled of stale smoke and cold java. Ben was nowhere in sight and there were no signs that he had been in since early morning or late last night. It wasn't unusual for him to be out for long hours. He liked to walk the canyons and scout the trails for signs of Tuskens or other activity. Often I got the feeling that he was on the run from something or someone, but I didn't let it bother me. A lot of the men on Tatooine were on the lam from something or other. Most of the time he got back around this time. I put up my rifle and gear and washed up at the washbasin, careful to use just enough water to dampen a cloth, and set to work making the evening meal.

The smells of food cooking and java boiling filled the house and the sounds of the night began to come alive as the suns set behind the mountains in a flaming collage of color that made it look for a moment as if the entire horizon was on fire. The clear desert air was brisk with the cool of the evening and the wind blew away the last of the day's heat as the stars came into view through the thinning clouds. I had always thought that there was nothing in the galaxy that could quite compare to the beauty and majesty of a desert sunset. For a few moments each day a man could just sit and watch the suns fade away into the hills and bathe the barren wastes of the desert in such beauty that he could forget about the dangers and the perils that this world had to offer. I sipped my java and watched the suns sink down below the horizon and watched the red and orange and gold fade from the sky and give way to the cool darkness of the night.

It doesn't take long for even the hottest of days to give way to a cold night in the desert, for in the desert the heat of the day escapes quickly and there is very little twilight. The night creatures came out of their holes and went about their business, their calls sounded in the growing darkness, and son the night was filled with the sounds of the scurrying of little feet and the flapping of wings as they soared through the cooling breeze. During the day the deserts of Tatooine are an arid wasteland where a man could ride for days and never see another living thing, but at night it truly comes alive.

The food was ready just as the suns disappeared behind the hills and I went and took the dishes from the stove. It was simple food, a pot of beans with some squash and homegrown greens on the side and the hot java to wash it down, and after two days of packaged rations it was like heaven on a plate. Footsteps sounded at the door just as I was about to sit down and instantly I palmed my gun and slipped back into the deeper shadows at the corner of the kitchen. A form appeared in the half-light of the moon in the doorway and walked calmly into the house, a hooded form that walked with an ease and grace no other could. I smiled and slipped the pistol back into its holster. Only one man could stroll into this house that easily and nonchalantly. Few came out this far that weren't running from something and the Tuskens thought of this place as taboo and avoided it most of the time. The settlers down in the Sea and toward the settlements left the place alone too, but only out of ignorance.

"Hello, Ben," I said as I stepped up to the table, "have a seat. Food's hot."

"I can see that. Beans again? I should have known better than to let you beat me to the stove. I think you would eat beans every day if I were not around to stop you."

"Probably. Still needs some meat to make it good."

"Yes, I know. It looks good, though."

He slid off his cloak and hung it on the peg near the door, standing in his traditional robes and foot wrappings. His old lightsaber hung from his belt, although he rarely used it unless it was in practice in the meditation garden. I could remember seeing him use it in combat only twice, once against a raiding party of Tuskens who had ambushed us in a pass two miles down from the house and once when a man had pulled a blaster on him while we were negotiating over the price of some eopies we had broken and brought in to sell. That man was a bad one and was known as a fast hand with a pistol, but Ben beat him to it and took his arm off with one smooth motion that seemed so casual that one would hardly believe he was in a life and death situation. The man's friends had been none too happy about it, but they backed up when they saw the muzzle of my ion rifle staring back at them. I had a reputation myself, or was just starting to get one at that time, and no one in their right mind wanted to buck a Remchester from fifteen feet.

We ate in silence for a few minutes then, both of us enjoying the calm night and the taste of the food. We were quiet men anyways and it wasn't unusual for us to go days at a time without speaking to each other. It had been different when I was younger. It seemed that not a day went by that Ben wasn't scolding me for some mischief that I had gotten into or getting on to me for skipping the lessons that he tried to teach me. He saw right away that my reflexes were faster than others and that I possessed a natural ability with weapons and tools. Often I would sneak out and practice with that old DL-44 and he would stand back and watch while I drew and shot rocks or old cans off of a rock shelf or made an old bit of scrap dance across the ground with every shot.

For years he had tried to teach me how to attain peace and tranquility within myself, as he called it, through meditation and other exercises, but after a couple years he had given it up. He said that I had too much revenge in me, too much hate to learn the ways of the mystical thing that he called the Force. He was always going on about the Force and the old ways of the Jedi. I had heard Dad talk about the Jedi as a small child, mostly with a kind of half-contempt and half-respect, but with Ben I learned more. He said that the Jedi had been the guardians of peace and order before the rise of the Empire and the Purge in which most of them had been wiped out. As far as Ben knew, only he and an ancient Ozzarian named Yoda were left of the old Jedi Order that had once numbered as much as ten thousand Jedi knights.

A few times he had tried to teach me to handle that lightsaber of his and let me use a second saber that he had taken from on old pupil of his for a practice tool, but right off he saw that it wasn't for me. I was a fair hand with a knife and had had to use one more than a few times over the years, but the finer art of the lightsaber was something that I simply could not master. I was much better with a blaster, which Ben had always called a "uncivilized, clumsy, random weapon". He explained that it was nothing to be ashamed of, that only a select few had the gifts needed to really understand the use of the saber, of the Force, and of the teachings of the Jedi.

One thing that he was able to teach me was the old ways of fighting that had been passed down through the generations of the Jedi Order, techniques that were known to few others in the galaxy. Ben had fought in the Clone Wars and had been taught from childhood how to fight and to handle himself "when diplomacy fails", and most of what he had learned he had passed on to me. Every now and then he would call me his padawan, whatever that meant. He hadn't called me that in years but I had always thought of it as a term of endearment.

"See anything interesting?", I asked after the meal.

"Not really. Nothing that I saw, but something that I felt has me distressed."

"Something you felt?"

"Yes. I feel as if something is very amiss, something that will spell great change. I haven't felt like this in a very long time, Aden. I fear that something is very wrong."

Any other person would have thought him a crazy old man, as most people did, but I had learned a long time ago to trust in Ben's feelings and his premonitions. More than once they had foretold trouble for us and we had been able to avoid it due to that foresight.

"I saw some tracks in the North Pass, some Tuskens moving along the trail from Bandit's Hole. Maybe a dozen men and four banthas. No women and no baggage train."

"Raiding party. Do you think they will come this way, Aden?"

"I don't think so. They were angling over toward the west. I saw a Jawa Sandcrawler rolling over the hills a few miles over that way yesterday, so they might be after them."

"Tuskens don't usually go after anything as big as a Sandcrawler. They might try to steal some of the droids they pick, though. I think we should keep an eye on them."

"I know a trail where I can follow them out of sight. I think I know where they'll be camped tonight."

"Be careful. You know how Tuskens are."

That I did. To most people Tuskens were mindless savages, and in battle they certainly fought like such, but they were as canny and as cunning as the most clever smuggler or junk dealer. I knew them to be superb fighters and shrewd traders, as well as caring parents for their young and talented hunters and trackers. They had lived on this world for over a thousand generations, long before the first human settlers had come here looking for a place to hide out and go about their business in peace, and the arrival of the newcomers had only given them a new source of booty for their frequent raids. The tribes didn't have much and never had, but the tribes nearer to the new settlements soon became richer for the swag that they took from the traders, scavengers, and prospectors that soon came along. The Tusken way of life had always been based on raiding and tribal warfare with the best warrior being the one who could bring back the most booty, the most banthas, and the most captives.

The night was still ringing with the sounds of the night creatures when I stepped out into the cool air to have a smoke and to enjoy the coolness. The heat of the day was long gone, the fire was going in the hearth, and Old Ben had retired to the garden for his nightly meditations. I stuffed my pipe and lit up, loving the pungent smell of the herb and the refreshing feeling that it gave. Somewhere out in the desert I could hear the lonely call of a bantha echoing off the hills, to be answered a moment later by the calls of a herd that was probably feeding or watering not far away. Banthas rarely strayed far from the watering holes and there were three within a ten mile circle of the house. The one bantha called out again and was answered by more of his kin, then howled once more. This time he sounded closer to the others, moving closer to the herd and the companionship that it would offer.

Would that ever happen for me? Would I ever find a place where I was welcomed, a place that I could call my own? I doubted it. Old Ben was alright and had been as much of a father to me as my own father had been, but it was a lonesome life that me and that old man led. Whenever I went into the towns and saw other men with their wives and families going into their homes, their own homes, I always felt a small degree of envy. Those men had something that I would probably never have. They had a family to go home to, a hearth and home of their own, a wife to share their lives with and children to carry on their name. I was a lonesome rider, a man of the high mountains and the far deserts where no one else would go, a man born to the wildest places that the planet had to offer. It had always been so, and likely always would be.

Ben was the closest thing to family that I had ever had, and though he had done all that he could to raise up right and to put me on the straight and narrow path he was still a poor substitute for the family that I had lost. One thing that he was right about in his training, and that was that I had too much hatred in my heart. Even I knew that it would burn me up one day, but I couldn't help it. Not a night had gone by since that awful day that I hadn't seen the faces of those five men in my sleep. Every night I relived the moment that my parents were killed right before my eyes, every detail of it indelibly seared into my brain. Even now, looking off into the growing darkness, I could still hear my mother's screams and the laughing of the bastards who had killed her, the whine of the blaster that had killed my father while he was down and helpless, the echo of the rifle shot fading into the distance . . .

"You have that old look, Aden."

The sound of his voice made me jump a little. I had been so lost in thought that I hadn't heard him come up behind me. Then again, Ben had always had a quiet step.

"What look?"

"The look that you get when you're remembering. I know it's hard to think about, but you have to let go of the past if you are ever to move forward into your future. One cannot have such hate and anger in his heart if he is to lead a happy life. The past is in the past, my young friend."

"Not for me. I can't forget it, Ben. Not ever."

"You have to, Aden. I won't be around forever, you know. What will you do when I am gone and you are left all alone? I sense that great and terrible things will soon be afoot, things that will be long remembered and will change everything that we know. I cannot explain it, but I sense that there will come a time of turmoil in which none of our futures are certain. I fear what will become of you if I had to go away."

I would finally go on my vengeance ride, I thought. For nearly twenty years I had vowed to seek revenge on the men that had taken everything from me, to hunt down every one of them and make them pay for what they had done. One of my greatest fears had been that one or all of them had died or been killed over the years and that I would miss my chance at getting even. They were all violent men who led violent lives and it was entirely possible that they had met violent ends in the years since that awful day. I knew two of their names; Jenson, the stocky man who had been the first one to attack my mother, and Rak'Ja, the Tusken Raider with the distinct gaffi stick. Jenson was known around Mos Eisley as a smuggler and gun hand for the Hutts, while Rak'Ja had made something of a reputation for himself as a war chief for one of the outlying tribes beyond the settled territories.

The other three I knew nothing of, although I had my suspicions. Every time we went to the towns I would go into the taverns and listen to all the talk that I could pick up, listening for the latest rumors of gunmen or hired killers that were working for this Hutt or that, smugglers who had made a name for themselves in one way or another, or bad men that were still talked about wherever tough men gathered. Taverns and cantinas were always clearinghouses for any kind of information and were always a good place to pick up the latest news or gossip. I had scarcely been out of the settled lands and had never been off-world in my life, but I could describe in detail such figures as Darth Vader or Boba Fett, the famous bounty hunter, and talk a blue streak about the latest events of the rebellion against the Empire that was gaining impetus in the core systems. I had no interest in such things, having no stake in the outcome, but it was always nice to hear about the latest battles and developments in the war.

"Get some sleep, Aden. I want to get out early and have a look at those Tuskens to see what they're up to. I'm not very worried. Tomorrow should be uneventful."


	2. Chapter 2

Before the suns were over the horizon, Ben and I were on the trail. We had a quick breakfast of java and greens and I went out to the corral and saddled up two of the eopies. Ben seldom rode, preferring to walk, but there was a chance that he would change his mind or we might get into a situation where a spare mount would be needed. A man never knew what the future would hold. Once the mounts were saddled, I went and got my Remchester and a Tusken cycler that we kept as a spare. The cycler I slid into the saddle scabbard, while my own was slung over my shoulder for easy use. I checked the power packs in my rifle and pistol, finding both fully charged, and I whetted the edge of my knife in my old whetstone to make sure it was good and sharp. There was no need, really. That knife was always razor sharp and could cut through flesh and bone like they were butter.

My clothing was specially chosen to blend into the desert landscape as much as possible. My shirt was a light maroon color, by trousers and leggings were both a neutral color that was almost identical to that of the sands, and my vest I now wore was of a light brown that would match the rocks of the Jundland Wastes. The only metal I wore was my belt buckle, and I had allowed it to tarnish just enough so that it would not shine.

Ben met me outside the house, still dressed in his traditional robes and his cloak. I offered him the cycler rifle, but he refused and went in favor of just his lightsaber. He was dangerous enough with just that. We talked out our plan for the day and within five minutes we were on the trail and heading toward the place where we believed the Tuskens would be camped. Ben would take the main bantha trail to the west and come up toward the Tuskens from the south, while I would swing north and come down on them from the north by way of an ancient trail that few knew and even fewer traveled. It was a narrow trail that was only followed by the occasional herd of wild eopies that went back and forth between water holes and kept to the wild back country to stay away from the predators and the Tusken hunters.

The coolness of the morning was refreshing and invigorating and I loved the feeling of the brisk air in my lungs and the cool shadows of the shaded canyon as I rode. I had always loved the cool feeling that the desert offered in the morning before the suns came up and beat down in all their fury. The desert truly was a beautiful and majestic land, but it was hard to appreciate it when a man was sweating to death and being baked in the suns. Even the deep canyons where we had made our home was like an oven when midday came around, even though it was in shade for most of the day until the noon zenith when the twin suns were directly overhead.

I followed the eopie trail into North Pass, then switched to a smaller trail that led from Bandit's Hole, where the raiders and thieves usually hid out from what little law there was in the Outer Rim Territories. It was a natural fortress that sat on top of a tall butte and could only be reached by a narrow trail where only one or two men could ride abreast at a time. One good man with a rifle could hold off an army from the escarpment and could hold the place until the stars fell from the sky, for there was a small trickle of natural water that flowed from a small crack in the rock. The Hole had been largely abandoned the last few years, but there were sometimes one or two wayward souls who took refuge there from time to time.

The trail I followed narrowed down to only a few feet wide and turned into a small canyon that ran for several miles before eventually joining up with Beggar's Canyon twenty miles to the northwest. My eopie took to the trail with ease and eagerness, for he was once a wild animal and had grown up in this country and knew the trails better than any man could. I eased up n the reins and let him have his head as he went down the canyon and picked his way along on the hardest ground where we would leave no tracks. I followed the canyon for about a mile before swinging west again and down another canyon that eventually went down and fed into the open desert. The trail led down the edge of a sheer cliff that fell away for hundreds of feet where one stirrup hung over nothing but air. I followed the trail down from the cliffs and into a small valley where some ancient river had once flowed from the mountains and fed into a larger river, both long gone and dry as a bone for untold centuries. It wasn't much of a valley, no more than a mile or so across and not more than two miles wide at its widest point, but there was a spring in the bottom and there was some game in the hills.

I found the remains of a camp in the bottom of the old riverbed, a likely place where I had camped myself several times. The banks were high and offered both shelter and concealment from prying eyes and a good reflector for the heat of a fire. I hunted around and the remains of two large fires, each with the tracks of six or seven men and the places where they had spread their bedrolls out for the night. Nearby I found the tracks of several banthas and four large piles of dung where they had been tied and waited for their masters to move out. The oldest pile was dry and hard, probably from the day before, while the newest was still steaming and couldn't have been dropped more than two hours before. There were tracks of about a dozen men and in the sand and after rooting around I found the bones of an eopie that had been their evening meal.

Following the trail of the party another half mile, I came to a place where the canyons split apart with one going to the west and another curving down to the south. Here the party split into two groups of six men each, with one group consisting mostly of young warriors and the other of more experienced men. I drew that conclusion from the fact that one group had only two banthas in it, meaning that only two warriors were old enough to have a bantha of their own. Generally, a Tusken warrior was given his own bantha at the age of eighteen and would keep it until death.

Now I had a problem on my hands. Which party would I pursue? Ben and I had planned to meet up with the main party and just keep an eye on them, but now that they had split up that would mean that one of us would have to face one of those parties alone. Obviously these men were out for raiding, but where would they go? There weren't many farms around, for Tuskens had a particular hatred for moisture farmers, and the nearest settlement of any size was the outskirts of Mos Espa and that was at least a hundred miles from here. There were isolated Jawa villages where they traded in scrap and droids and there were sometimes Sandcrawlers in these canyons that would be looking for droids and anything that they could salvage. Sand People didn't normally bother with Jawas that much, but loot was loot and if these were young warriors out for glory then they would probably grab whatever they could find.

I sat my saddle and considered the situation. Ben was somewhere to the south and was coming up the trail toward what he thought was a larger group of Tuskens, but now that group had splintered and any group he spotted would only be part of the whole. I wasn't worried about him running into the smaller group. No young sprout on his first raid had a chance against an old warrior like Ben, or even six of them of the place was right, but that other party could swing around to rejoin the first and set an ambush for Ben or anyone else who might be coming down the trail. Tuskens were masters of the ambush and it was their preferred method of attack whenever possible. Old Ben was the best fighter I had ever seen when it came to up close and personal work, but no man could stop a bullet from three hundred yards. He would be cut down without a chance and no one would be the wiser.

Considering the options, I decided to pursue the western group. I put heels to my eopie and swung my rifle around to ride with it in hand and ready for use. The trail was easy enough to follow. A bantha leaves a damn large track and there were six in this group, all riding single file in the usual habit of Sand People. They preferred to ride in single file to attempt to hide their numbers, although that didn't always work. A good tracker could still tell the difference. I rode at a fast pace now, not bothering to stop and study the tracks. They were plain enough and easy to follow in the loose sand and soft earth. I would catch up to them soon enough. A bantha is a good animal and loyal to a fault but I had never seen one that was all that fast. An eopie could easily outpace one even over a long distance. I let my mount have his head and pointed him down the trail of the Tuskens and let him eat up the miles.

I left the canyons behind and went into the rocky country at the edge of the Wastes. High rocky ridges rose on every side and the faraway sand hills of the Dune Sea showed in the gaps between the high shelves of black and red rock. By now the suns were up in full force and the day became hot and sweat trickled down my face and neck. Salt stung my eyes and I tasted it on my lips. my clothes were light and meant to shed heat, but nothing could get rid of all of the desert's fury. Heat waves shimmered across the horizon and the trail ahead of me almost seemed to dance and waver across my vision. That wasn't good. A hidden marksman could be anywhere in the labyrinth of rocks and crags and the heat waves would make it that much harder to spot him before he got a shot at me. My rifle grew hot in my hands and I wiped my palms on my vest every few minutes. At any moment I expected the feel the bite of a bullet or hear the war cry of a Tusken up in the hills.

I don't know what it was that warned me. A flash of light on a gun barrel, some small movement that didn't register on more than an instinctive level, or maybe it was the sixth sense that a man develops from living in the wilds. Whatever it was, it was just in time. My head jerked to one side and I felt something sting my neck, then I felt the whiff of the bullet as it passed by me and at the same instant I heard the crack of the gunshot somewhere up the canyon. Reflexively my went to my neck and the swift movement threw me off balance and out of the saddle. I felt the pain of a wound and saw the ground rising to meet me, and as I hit the sand I heard another shot on the heels of the first and the angry whine of another bullet striking stone and careening off into space.

I hit the ground hard, but I laid still and did not move. Somehow they had caught me in a moment of daydreaming and gotten a shot at me as I rode. It could happen to anyone, I guess. The men that had shot at me were probably up there on some ledge right now, looking down at me in the sand and wondering if they had done the job right. I had fallen from the saddle just as the bullet had hit me, for I was almost certain that I was hit, so it had probably appeared that I had been picked clean out of the saddle. I lay there on the hot sand, my face burning, and I did not dare to move a muscle. They were watching for that, watching for some small sign that I was alive, and at the first such sign they would certainly pump more lead into me to finish me off. An experienced fighter would have shot into me after I was down to make sure that I was a goner, so I guessed that these were probably two of the younger warriors in the party. Two? There had to be at least two, for no cycler rifle could be reloaded as fast as those two shots had been fired. There might be more but I knew that there were at least two shooters up there.

My eopie walked about a dozen feet before he stopped, finally realizing that his rider was no longer on his back. He turned to face me, staring down at my body in the sand but not seeming to really mind at all that I was down. My rifle was on the ground near where I had fallen. When I left the saddle it had slipped from my hand. My right hand was under my body and within a few inches of my pistol. The safety strap was still in place, but it would come off easy enough. Slowly and carefully I inched my fingers closer to the blaster until I felt the edge of the ivory butt under my fingertips. I worked my fingers to keep them from going numb, took a shallow breath and let it out gently so as not to stir up any dust or sand, and I waited.

My eopie took a couple wandering steps toward me, but stopped and turned to look at something up the canyon. A slight rise in the trail blocked my view of that direction so that all I could see was my mount and the tops of the cliffs. Something had drawn his attention. Eopies are naturally curious animals and are drawn to any strange movement. Someone was coming down from those ridges. Those two Tuskens coming down to collect trophies. An eye or an ear, something to carry back to the village to brag about to the women and the other warriors. They were on their way down, and they thought that I was dead.

Minutes passed with no sound but that of my eopie grunting and sniffing at the parched earth in search of some water. Mentally I tried to estimate the time it would take for those men to get down to this level. Five minutes? Ten minutes? Maybe less than that. They might still be watching, but they might not be. I chanced a movement and slid my hand down to the butt of my pistol. My fingers found the ivory stocks and grasped around it, my trigger finger sliding into the trigger guard and finding the trigger. I eased my position a little and took some weight off my gun hand. The other was still splayed out in front of me where it had fallen. My eyes scanned my line of sight for anything that might betray the position of my enemies. My mount was still ambling around near me, picking around in the sand and snorting every few seconds, not paying attention to anything. Minutes passed slowly by and the sun climbed higher in the sky, scorching the sand and heating the canyon to an unbearable temperature, but I still didn't dare to move.

My eopie scratched at the sand and snorted up a little cloud of dust a few feet from my face, but then all of a sudden his head came up and looked back toward the ridge again. This time he grunted and snorted, as if he was annoyed. They were close. I started to hear footsteps now, then as they came closer I could hear them talking in their own tongue. I spoke a little Tusken, but the dialect these two were using was different from the ones that I was used to. I could pick out a few words and muddle my way through their conversation. They were saying something about an old man and a kid that the others were tracking and a blue droid that they had seen. They said that the others would have fun with the droid and wished they could be there to loot the kid's speeder, but they would settle for my hands to show off.

Their footsteps came closer and their talk became louder, so that I could even hear them laughing about the women they would get when they came back with my gear and their trophies. My eopie snorted again, not liking the look or the smell of them, and took a couple steps back toward me. I laid perfectly still and clenched my hand around the stock of my DL-44. They came into view, two men of equal height dressed in tribal robes and wearing their distinctive face wrappings. They were indeed younger men, joking and laughing at each other's jokes . . . . and with their weapons out of action. One walked with his rifle in one hand and his knife in the other, while the other had his rifle slung and was walking with his gaffi stick held low. He started for the eopie, his hand held out for the reins and talking in a calming tone, while his friend came toward me with that knife. He came closer, closer, and closer still, until finally he was almost on me. His friend reached for the reins and my eopie bellowed loudly.

The two of them were momentarily distracted by the noise, and at that moment I rolled over and drew my pistol in the same movement. The one with the knife looked down at me again and started toward me, and I shot him in the throat just as he was about to let out a war cry. The bolt hit him in the neck and let out a shower of sparks and flame, his war cry was cut short and he grabbed his throat and fell to the ground. His friend let go of the reins and grabbed for his rifle. I shifted targets and shot twice into his chest. He went back two steps and dropped his cycler rifle and as he went back I got to my feet and ran for my eopie. I scooped up my rifle as I ran by and jumped into the saddle. The one I'd shot in the chest started to come at me again, but I shot him again as I rode by and dropped him with a bolt to the head.

He didn't move, neither did the other, and after a moment I holstered my blaster and started down the trail again. My face was hot and my skin felt burned by the sand and the sun, but it was no worse than I had had in the past. I put heels to my eopie and put him into a full gallop. He sped down the trail at a good clip and I scanned the ridges and cliffs for any more ambushers, rifle in hand. Those two back there had been talking of their friends ambushing Ben and the strange kid and his droids just down the trail, somewhere close by the sound of their talk. If they were close, then they would have heard those shots. They might have even heard my blaster shots as well. Blasters are quieter than guns, but in these rocky hills and canyons sound could carry for miles.

The sun was beating down mercilessly by now and I could feel sweat wetting the front of my shirt as I rode. Salt stung my eyes and I tasted it on my lips, and somewhere on my scalp I felt it stinging a cut that I must have gotten from my fall. I wanted to check it to see how bad it was but there was no time. I had to get to that ambush and either stop it or at least interrupt it as best as I could. I found the tracks of the banthas a half mile from my own ambush, all carrying riders and all traveling in single file. The sand had just started to drift over the tracks, so they were fresh. They couldn't be more than an hour or two old. On a windy day like this and in sand this loose tracks would never last much longer than that.

I followed the tracks into a shallow valley that sloped down between two high ridgelines to the west and east. Two ancient, dry creek beds cut through the desert and were bordered by high black rocks that were both red hot and razor sharp. Wind and sand often shaped the ancient basalt rocks like these over the eons into edges sharp enough to slice clean through a finger or a hand if it brushed against it just right. I'd seen men lose fingers and ruin boots and trousers that way. The bottoms of the old streams were filled with deep drift sand that would swallow man and mount both, so I kept to the rocky edges and tried to keep to the most shaded places. The rocks were like ovens and in the close air of the valley it was even hotter than it had been on the plateau. The valley itself was maybe three miles long by a mile wide and rimmed by saw-toothed spines of black basalt rock that looked like hell with the fires out. The tracks became indefinite divots in the sand as it became thicker and looser, and after following them for another ten minutes I saw the banthas.

They were all there, all four of them, and they were being watched by a single man. The other three were somewhere up in the rocks and probably setting up the ambush I was seeking to disrupt. I slipped into the deeper of the creek beds and left my eopie in the most shaded and out of sight place I could find. I tied him to a dry stand of desert scrub and went on, my rifle ready in my hands, toward where the banthas were being held. The man holding them was going from one to the other, speaking softly to them and feeding them some kind of grain that he carried in a sack at his belt. His rifle was in the crook of his arm and he had a big curved knife and a gaffi stick at his back. He hadn't seen me yet, and I crept closer to him, keeping behind the cover of the rocks and going in a low crouching walk that would have kept me out of his line of sight. I kept the banthas and the rocks between me and him as much as I could and picked my way along slowly and carefully until I was within a dozen yards of him. He still hadn't seen me and his back was to me. I started to lift my rifle, but then thought better of it. A shot now would only bring the rest of his raiding party down on me. This would have to be quiet and quick.

I slung my rifle over my shoulder and slid my knife from its sheath. It was a good knife, that one, made from alloy steel and honed to a razor's edge that would cut through flesh and bone with ease. It had an eight-inch blade that was straight and double-edged, thick enough and strong enough to be used for just about any purpose. I held it low and ready, then with a quick burst of speed I darted across the space between me and the guard. He must have heard my footsteps, for he started to turn and I saw his hand close around the stock of his cycler. I came on him just as he was turning and with one quick movement I put a hand over his hooded mouth and thrust up and between the ribs with my knife, raising a grunt and a stifled scream from him as I withdrew and struck again. He tried to bite at my hand, but his face wrappings kept his teeth in check. I sank the blade in to the hilt and felt the warm flow of blood over the handle. His body jerked and convulsed involuntarily, but then he went limp in my arms and then he was dead.

His body fell back and I caught him in my arms, drug him over to a shallow place near the creek bed, and once he was hidden there I took his cycler and his ammo belt. I stuck my knife into the sand, to cleanse it of blood, then sheathed it. A quick check of the cycler found it loaded and ready to fire. Like most Tusken guns, it was old and rusty and not in the best repair, but it was still a good gun and when I looked at the stock I found six notches cut into the wood. I slung it over my shoulder and started up the path to the high ridges, my own rifle held ready.

The path was narrow and faint, probably an old eopie or dewback trail, and it climbed up and through the rocky spine of the ridge in the usual twisting and curving way that such trails often do. The animals that made these trails always followed the easiest ways and went by the lay of the land rather than the fastest ways the way that men did. The rocks seemed to radiate heat of their own and felt like ovens when I put a hand to them. I avoided the sharpest rocks and was careful of my footing, knowing that even one wrong step could betray my position. A loose stone, and patch of hard dirt scratching under my boot, any sound could mean death. In some places there were great boulders of basalt or sandstone that had tumbled down from the higher hills in some bygone age and now blocked or skirted the paths, and behind any one of them there could be a Tusken waiting for me. With careful steps I made my way up the ridge to the cliffs that overlooked the valley, where I was sure that I would find the Tuskens.

I stopped and looked down at the valley below and thought that I saw a tiny dot coming down one of the many paths and trails that crisscrossed the valley floor. It wasn't a man, not tall enough, and he didn't seem to be walking but rather looked like he was rolling. I got out my binoculars and zoomed in on the form. Sure enough, it was an R2 unit with a blue and white paint job. What the hell would a droid be doing way out here? Is that the one that those two back yonder had been talking about? A droid this far out was guaranteed to either be picked up by Jawas or smashed by Tuskens unless its master was around to look out for it. Maybe his master was coming for him, which might be the kid that the two Tuskens had talked of ambushing. If the droid was here, then the kid couldn't be far behind. That droid was about five hundred yards off and closing fast. I didn't have much time.

A sound from the ledge above me froze me in position and made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I had stopped to watch the droid under an overhang of rock that offered some shade from the suns, forming a little ledge that rose maybe seven feet from the path and ran for about a dozen yards before the path wound up and around the edge of it to the top of the ridgeline. Someone was on top of that ledge, not more than two feet above me, and they were talking about that droid. A boot scraped at the rock and send sifted over the edge, falling in a little stream right in front of my face. The first voice spoke again, this time to someone else up there with him, and he was commenting on the droid coming up the valley. I understood what they were saying and didn't like it:

" . . . . coming up fast. The owner?"

"In a speeder with another droid. Ja'Lai saw them with his seeing machine. They'll be here soon."

"And the old man?"

"We lost him in the canyons. The others are coming up from the southeast to cut him off. We'll have him soon enough."

"Who is the young one who comes for the droid?"

"The Skywalker boy from the Lars farm. He's no threat."

Luke? Since when did he come to the Jundland Wastes? I'd met Luke Skywalker a few times over the years, always when Ben and I went to trade in Mos Eisley or at his uncle's farm, and he was no kind of fighter. He was a decent shot with a cycler and a first-rate bush pilot, the kind that would be better served flying a cruiser in space than running around the deserts of this backwater planet, but I knew that he would stand no chance against a battle-hardened Tusken warrior in any kind of a fight. If they caught him, they would kill him. Why would be come into this place alone just to get a droid back?

I held perfectly still until I heard the men's steps moving down the ledge toward a better position, then went up the path and all but crawled around the bend and up onto the crest of the ridge where they were waiting. In the distance I heard an odd sound coming from the open desert. A speeder coming up fast. I ducked behind a large boulder and looked through the binocs again, seeing the dot of a speeder with a tall dust cloud behind it moving through the shimmering heat waves. It was hard to judge just how far away it was, but it couldn't have been more than a mile or two. They would be here in mere moments at the speed it was going, and I knew it had to be Luke. I crept around the boulder and, crouched low and ready for anything, I made my way to the ledge again. I saw them there, both of the warriors that I had heard talking, laying prone at the rock's edge with their guns leveled at the valley floor. In another minute or two they would have Luke dead to rights. There was no question in my mind that they might miss, for Tuskens were known to put a bullet into a podracer going three hundred miles an hour. That distant speeder was coming closer now, and the droid was within two hundred yards of the ridgeline.

"Howdy, boys."

I said it conversationally, almost pleasantly, like I was saying hello on the street, but the reaction they gave me was anything but friendly. One came to his feet and started to turn his gun on me, while the other rolled over and went to his knees as he spun around. I had my rifle at hip level and when I saw that gun coming up I just shifted it and squeezed the trigger. The distance was less than twenty feet and there was no need to aim. I just pointed that Remchester like I would point a finger and I saw the yellow bolt slam into the Tusken's chest just before he dropped his gun and fell back and over the cliff. The other got to his feet and started at me, swinging his gun like a club. There was no time to work the charging handle on my Remchester, so I stepped back and ducked away from the swing. He missed me by a hair and was thrown off balance by the impetus of the swing, and in the second it took him to recover I stepped in and hit him hard in the gut with the butt of my rifle. He grunted and went back a step and I followed him in, bringing the heavy barrel up and into his throat before swinging the gun up again in a vicious butt strike. I heard bone crack under the thick face wrappings and he fell to the ground limp. He wasn't dead, but he was out cold for sure.

Any other man in my position would have put a bolt in his head right then, and I certainly thought about it, but I wasn't about to kill a good fighting man while he was helpless. Had he risen up and come at me again I would have killed him, but for now he was no threat to me. He would live to fight another day. I took his weapons and tossed them over the ledge, then tied his hands and feet with some rough cordage I found on him. It would take him hours to get out of those knots once he came to. Just for good measure, I tied an old handkerchief around his mouth to keep him from shouting for help.

The speeder came into the valley and easily overtook the little droid. A tall blonde guy dressed in white farmer's clothes hopped out, followed a second later by a golden protocol droid with a twitchy way of moving that reminding me of an old man. They went up to the droid and were speaking harshly to it, completely unaware of how close they had just come to dying. I sat on the rocky ledge and worked the charging lever on the Remchester, uneasy. Where was the third man, that Ja'Lai that the others had been talking about? Was he up here among the rocks like the others had been? Was he somewhere down in the valley, keeping a lookout? He had to be somewhere, and wherever he was he was a threat to us all. That other group would be coming up soon and they would be down in that valley, if they weren't already.

A scuff on the rock behind me caught my attention and immediately I spun around and went to one knee, rifle up, but I lowered it a second later. It was Old Ben. He still wore his brown robes and came up to me with a finger to his lips and at a signal from him I followed him to the southern tip of the ridgeline. From there we could look down into a shallow canyon and see a small dust cloud, such as would be made by at least two banthas.

"You see it there?"

"I see it, Ben. Is it them?"

"Yes. I've been following them for some time. Did you have trouble?"

"A little. An ambush a few miles back. That Skywalker kid is down there with two of his droids."

"Luke? Why would be he so far out here?"

"I don't know, but if we don't get to him before long he'll be dead meat. There's still one more up here someplace. We need to find him."

"Alright. You stay up here and see what you can do. I'm going back down."

"What if that other war party catches you?"

"Don't worry about that. I have a plan."

With that, we parted ways. Ben slipped back down whatever hidden path had brought him up, fading into the desert like a ghost on the wind. It always amazed me the way that he could slip away into the desert with no sound or sign at all. He barely even left any tracks. Once he was gone, I went back to where I had tied up the Tusken. He was still there and was still unconscious. I picked my way through the jumble of jagged rocks and boulders until I found another path that led down the length of the ridgeline.

The rocky spine on which I sat was one of the two that bordered this little valley, running its entire length and rising to a height of a thousand feet or more above the desert below. There were escarpments and rocky ledges that offered excellent views of the valley below, but most of them were too exposed for me to use. That Ja'Lai was out there somewhere, and he would know by now that his friends were either dead or out of action. He would have heard that blaster shot, even if Luke and his droid friend hadn't, and he would be hunting me. Sweat stung my eyes as I laid among the rocks and searched every possible hiding place, every crack and cranny where a man could hide from view. Tuskens were experts at staying hidden, absolute masters of desert warfare, and staying one step ahead of them was an art in itself. I had lived and fought among them all my life and I knew most of their tricks but they were always a secretive sort that were reluctant to give away all of their secrets. He was here somewhere, hidden among these very blazing rocks, and he would kill me if he saw me. My gun grew warm in my hands and the suns beat down mercilessly. Heat waves danced among the boulders, the wind whistled and moaned over the desert flats down below, and at the trailhead one of the banthas called out into the desert.

The minutes ticked by like hours. How long had it been since Ben left? Five minutes? Ten? It couldn't have been ten, but certainly more than five. I crouched among the huge black rocks, trying not to touch them for the heat, my eyes searching for even the smallest movement. The Tusken I had tied was still where I had left him, still tied and still unconscious. From my position I could see him there on the ledge. I had hoped that his friend would go down and try to untie him or maybe come down and give him a warrior's death, as was their way when a comrade was about to be captured, but so far the trap hadn't worked. This Ja'Lai was a smart one. He knew that that man would be watched and that coming to help him would mean death, and so he stayed hidden in the rocks. Nothing would bring him out of there, either. This was an ancient, deadly game we were playing here, and it was a game at which I was much practiced. It was the game of the desert, a game of patience and skill, a game of death. I sat in the rocks squatted on my heels, just as my adversary was somewhere nearby, and I knew that neither of us would be in a hurry to expose himself to the other's fire. The first to move was the first die in this sort of game. A man as only allowed one mistake in this kind of struggle and most of the time he would never know he had made it before he was gone from this world.

Sitting there among the dark boulders, my eyes ever searching, I found myself marveling at the sheer beauty of the scene. It's amazing how a place as barren as the desert could be so beautiful, so bewitching in its sheer wildness and danger. It was a place where death and struggle were the status quo and where all life in any form revolved around the death of another. Nothing in the desert survives without struggle. Every plant had thorns, many of them deathly poisonous, every animal had horns or teeth or claws with which to fight or to kill, every water hole was hidden and naturally protected. Even the lowly eopie had its large pads and hard, hoof-like toes that could easily smash bone to bits when enough force was put into the blow. Every animal was adapted to this land and they all had their own unique way of surviving. The banthas had their fur that collected dew and any other ambient moisture and absorbed it through the skin, the eopies had their long snouts that could burrow into the sand in search of water, the dewbacks had their massive water bladders that would store the water they drank so that they could go for days or even weeks without a drink.

Just as the animals had learned to live with the desert, so had the Sand People. For untold eons they had lived in the harsh, inhospitable wastes of Tatooine, longer than anyone dared to imagine. When the first settlers came more than two thousand years ago, they were here. When the oldest surveys of the system had been made in the first days of the Republic, nearly ten thousand years ago, they were here. I had seen petro glyphs in caves and under sheltered cliffs that were hundreds of thousands of years old, seen the ancient ruins of cities and villages so old that they had been forgotten even by the Sand People themselves. For thousands of generations they had lived here, never fighting the desert but living with it and with the animals that called it home. No man could fight the desert and hope to win. The desert, like the Sand People and the stones in which I sat, was timeless. It had seen the rise and fall of empires, seen whole species come and go like the drifting sands, and yet it always it stood eternal. Its game of life and death played itself out millions upon millions of times, the bones of billions of men and beasts filled the sands and the stones and the sediments below our feet, and when all workings of man were just so much dust on the wind and man himself was a distant memory the desert would still be there just as it always had been.

The bantha called again down in the valley, answered a moment later by a second. The second group of Tuskens was here, then. Had Ben found them? Were Luke and his droids all right? I moved on cat feet and slipped between two jumbles of boulders where I wasn't likely to be seen unless from above. There was still no sign of Ja'Lai. Was he even still up here? I dismissed the thought even as it entered my mind. He was still here. I would have seen or heard him if he had gone down into the valley and I knew his kind too well to think that he would give up so easily. He wanted me and my weapons, my loot, the prestige that my head would bring him, an revenge for those friends of his that I had killed. He wanted Luke and the droids, but he wanted me more.

I picked my way carefully through the rocks, crouched low and moving slowly and carefully. My legs were burning from the exertion of crouching so long. The Remchester was growing heavy in my hands and my shirt and vest were wet with sweat. I smelled of stale sweat and dust, my mouth was suddenly dry, and my eyes hurt from staring into the bright sunlight. I started to move again when a strange sound froze me in place. It was a scream, a strange scream like no other I had ever heard before. It was high-pitched and was one of pure fear and terror, almost like the scream of an animal that had been taken down by some predator and was in the throes of death. A second later it was joined by the distinctive war cry of a Tusken and the dull clanking of metal on stone. I stiffened and instinctively spun around at the sound of the scream, and it was all that saved my life.

A war cry sound above me and I felt something hit me hard across the back even as a large weight came down on top of me and knocked me off balance. The blow knocked me sprawling and I hit the ground rolling, swinging onto my knees and spinning on my heel. My shoulder was tingling and there was a pain shooting through me. I spun around and saw the form of a Tusken rising up in front of me. He had a gaffi stick in his hands with a distinctive bone head made from the ball of a dewback femur, and there was blood on the sharp flanges that had been carved into it.

He came at me just as I spun around, bellowing out his war cry and swinging his gaffi stick in swirling patterns meant to distract and to build impetus for another blow. I saw the shaft of the bone coming down and I blocked it with my rifle, pushing the staff back and away from me and lashing out with the barrel. He ducked the under the blow and my barrel hit his shoulder and glanced off. He brought the other end of the gaffi stick up at my groin and I saw in horror that it had been fashioned into a kind of spiked mace with one long, sharp spike in the center that could easily pierce my femoral artery. I sidestepped and hit hard at his strong arm, the butt of my rifle connecting with his wrist. I heard something crack and he grunted under his face wrappings, but he didn't let go of his weapon and he rushed at me like a crazed bantha bull. He hit me with his shoulder and shoved me into the rocks, slamming me into the hot stone and knocking my gun from my grasp.

He moved fast, incredibly fast, and before I could even think about it he hit me hard in the side with the head of his gaffi stick and smashed me in the face with the shaft. I felt a stabbing pain in my side and the warm flow of blood on my lips, then saw him winding up for another swing. I shot a hard right jab into his cheek, feeling the jaw under the wrappings give way under my fist. He went back a step and I hit him with a left swing to the guts and another jab to the face. He went back another step under the force of the blows, but he quickly recovered and swung up with the gaffi stick as I came in for another punch. I saw it coming up too late and took the hit on the chin. My head snapped back and he hit me again with the and stick and knocked my head into the rock wall, then came in close smashed it into the rock wall twice more. Stars exploded in my brain and the world swam in a haze of pain and dizzy fog.

Something rough and coarse latched onto my throat and I felt myself being lifted free of the sandstone, my feet dangling beneath me, and suddenly I was fighting for every breath and clawing at the thing that was cutting off my windpipe. As my head cleared a second later I came to the horrible realization that I was being choked and that he Tusken's gaffi stick was under my chin, the rough and dry desert bark of the shaft scraping at the skin of my throat and blocking my every breath. I grabbed at the shaft of the weapon and tried to pull it down and away from my neck, but the Tusken was an uncommonly strong man and he held strong to his weapon and kept me suspended just a few inches off the ground. I felt myself getting lightheaded and the world became hazy again. I clawed again at his hands and at the gaffi stick but by now my limbs were becoming weaker and again my attacks were ineffective.

My left hand went to my side and felt for my knife, grasping the leather-wrapped haft and sliding it from the sheath before stabbing down hard at the Tusken's leg. I felt the blade sink deep and heard him let out a muffled scream of pain, felt the warm flow of blood over my hand, then withdrew the blade and stabbed down hard again, then again. This time I felt the blade go deep and stop against something solid. I tried to pull it out again and found that it wouldn't budge and I knew that it was lodged in his femur and had probably severed an artery. His grip loosened and I fell to my knees on the hard sandstone, burning my hands as they touched the hot stone and gasping for air in great heaving gulps. The stabbing pain in my side hit me harder with every breath and my throat was raw and bleeding from a dozen tiny scratches. I probably had a broken rib or two and maybe a couple more than were bruised.

I heard the Tusken behind me, groaning and grunting as he struggled to pull the knife free from his leg bone. I got my breath and managed to get to my feet. He saw me rising and his hand dropped for his belt. I followed his hand and for the first time I saw the butt of an old blaster pistol stuck behind his belt and held in a crude leather scabbard. His hand wrapped around the faded, beaten grips of the blaster and at the same instant I felt my DL-44 jump in my hand and saw the red bolt tear into his chest in a shower of sparks and flame. I had no memory of drawing the gun, but that was of no consequence. I took a step toward him and shot into him again, then again, until finally he fall back against the rock wall and slid to the sand in a burned, bloody heap. His chest was black and smoldering and his hand still grasped the pistol. I knelt down beside him and checked his vitals, finding him dead.

I all but collapsed down beside him, heaving for breath for several minutes before I got my bearings again. My throat was raw and sore from the violent attack and my lungs were burning with the effort of fighting off the attack and recovering the air I had lost. My head was still swimming, my side felt like a spear had been buried in it, and when I put a hand to my lips I found that they were smashed to a pulp. I had some loose teeth and my mouth was bloody. I finally came to myself again and holstered my pistol, then gathered up the Tusken's belongings. The pistol he carried was old and in poor repair, probably without even enough charge for a shot or two, so I tossed it away. His rifle was empty on his back and I found that he had no more ammunition for it, then took his gaffi stick and broke it over a large basalt boulder. It was only then that I remembered the cycler I'd been carrying on my own back and got it out to check on it. The barrel was broken off where the gaffi stick had hit it and the action itself was smashed beyond repair. It hadn't been a very fine gun to begin with, but it had been a decent gun that had more than likely saved my life. I'd seen men's skull split clean in two by a gaffi stick and the hit that he had given me probably would have broken my shoulder or my back if it had hit me full force I would have been a dead man and by now he would have my fingers on his necklace and he would be somewhere on the rim with a rifle pointed down at Ben and that Skywalker boy.

The Skywalker boy? It was then that I remembered the scream that had distracted me just before the Tusken came down on me. It had been like no other scream I had ever heard, either from man or beast, and it had come from down in the valley. I grabbed up my Remchester and made my way down to the edge of the rim and looked down into the valley, seeing two banthas and a guard moving toward the place where Luke's speeder was parked. The two banthas were being led by a Tusken trailing the reins to the two large animals, while two others were dragging something up to the speeder. I put the Remchester to my shoulder and zoomed in with the scope, seeing that the something they were dragging was Luke Skywalker. He didn't seem to be dead but he was certainly unconscious. They dragged him a few yards away from the speeder and dropped him in the sand, then the three of them commenced to looting the speeder.

A Tusken's life was a hard one a bitter one that was lived with few luxuries to speak of. To an average man the little gear and loot that could be found in a farm boy's speeder wouldn't even be worth the effort of looking through it, but to a Tusken there could be things there that would be priceless in trade or in some useful way around camp. Cycler ammunition, food, tools, water rations, spare clothing, parts, whatever odds and ends there might be that a farmer or a scavenger needed for his everyday work, all would be valuable to a Tusken in his own village. The speeder itself wouldn't be of much use to them in and of itself, but it could be taken apart and traded for parts or scrap of the scrap itself could be used to make weapons, tools, shields or to repair their hide lodges back at camp.

Luke wasn't moving when I looked back at him. I couldn't tell of he was dead or not, nor could I see the droids that had been with him. For his sake, I hoped that he was dead. If those devils took him back to their camp alive then he would be a long, long time in dying and his death would be anything but pleasant. There were stories of what the Sand People did to their captives and although I had lived with them and traded with them all my life I could not remember a single time when I had actually seen them do away with a prisoner. I'd heard the screams and seen the bodies afterward, or what was left of the bodies, and I had heard the warriors bragging about what they would do to the next round of captures. As I said, the life of a Tusken was a hard and dangerous one that and one that required only the strongest and the bravest to live it. A man had to be tough and brave to live their kind of life, so the only qualities that were respected by the Sand People were strength, bravery, and courage in the face of pain and torture. A man that held out against the pain was respected and given a warrior's death, while a man who screamed and begged for his life was tortured to death as a coward.

I took a bead on the two Tuskens that had brought him up and slowly took up slack on the trigger, knowing that they were at the very edge of my range but still pumped from the fight with the dead man a few minutes ago. I took in a deep breath and let it out slowly, took in another and exhaled slowly again, held the reticle of the sight on one of the men's head, then started to squeeze the trigger slowly and gently.

A shrill, high-pitched wail from just up the valley stopped me. It was different from the scream I had heard earlier, fiercer and with more power behind it than fright, and this one was more familiar than the first. It was the distinctive roar of a krayt dragon. The Tuskens near the speeder immediately froze in position and all lifted their weapons, searching for the source of the cry. A krayt dragon was nothing to trifle with and one of the many creatures of the desert that were to be respected and feared above all others. A male krayt dragon could be as long as thirty feet and stand three meters tall at the shoulder and could easily kill and eat two or three banthas or dewbacks with little effort. Killing one was a rite of passage for the greatest warriors and hunters of the Tusken tribes and a challenge beyond compare to the best hunters and adventurers of the non-native settlers. The call came again and a dark figure came out of one of the many small canyons that fed into the valley and the three Tuskens scattered and ran or their banthas. Another moment and they were running at full speed down the trail to the head of the valley and out of harm's way.

Only the figure that was coming down that little canyon was no krayt dragon. I took my finger off the trigger and relaxed, seeing Old Ben in his hooded cloak coming over to where Luke lay in the sand. He knelt over the boy and spoke into the rocks at someone out of view, then the same little blue and silver astromech droid came hobbling out of the shelter of the rocks and the boulders. A smart droid, that one. No one knew better how to dismantle a droid in just a few minutes flat than a young Tusken, unless it was a Jawa. The kid came to and he and Ben spoke for a minute or two before I heard the distant call of a horn and the bellow of a bantha. They Tuskens were calling for reinforcements and were preparing to make another move on the speeder and the droids. They were probably expecting their friends to come running, the very friends that lay dead on this ridge, but it wouldn't take long for these hills to be overrun with raiding parties. If the tribes were on the warpath, then I was certain that these would not be the only groups on the move.

Ben helped the kid to his feet and they started for the rocks again, evidently looking for something, and Ben held up a hand and gave me the signal for "return". Over the years we had worked out a system of hand gestures and signals for communicating silently and across distances that made shouting dangerous. I saw the signal and whistled the call of a wild eopie, then got to my feet and started back down the trail. I passed the dead Tusken in the narrow path and the body of the sniper on the ledge, and as I went by I saw the man that I had tied moving around and trying to scoot over toward his friend's corpse. Looking for a weapon, no doubt. He stiffened when he saw me and I kept him covered with my rifle as I came over.

Any other man would have killed him right then and there, and the old voice in the back of my head warned me to finish him off as he lay there wriggling in the sand, but at the same time I felt a respect for this man that made me lower my weapon. He was a tough man and a good fighter and right now he was laying there helpless in the sand and no more threat to me than the banthas at the bottom of the hill. His hands were tied and he was gagged, and somehow in his crawling for the body of his fallen comrade his goggles and face wrappings had come loose so that his face and eyes were exposed. I looked into those eyes of his and saw the old fire that was in every fighting man, the inborn need to fight, to kill, to survive in any way possible, but there was no hate there. He looked into the black muzzle of my rifle and I saw the expectance of death come over him, the readiness to meet the end that any warrior must have, and in that moment I saw him as an equal. An enemy, yes, but a good man and one that I could respect.

"I'm letting you go, friend," I said to him, "but don't think that this is over. You're too good a fighting man to go out this way. I'm sparing you for today, but if I ever see you on the other end of my rifle again then I'll kill you deader than the Jedi Order. You understand?"

He didn't say anything, but he nodded in response. I stepped over him and tossed him the knife from his dead friend's belt, then went on down the trail to where I had left their banthas and my eopie. The animals were all still there, just as I had left them, and in a moment I was in the saddle and heading home. I gave the banthas a good slap on the rump and a few shouts of encouragement to get them started down the canyons so that they would scatter, and riding in their tracks I made my way down the canyons toward the house before leaving them a half mile up and starting back for Ben's cabin.

The trip back took less time, seeing as I no longer had to follow the Tuskens' route and could follow whichever trail I wanted. I went down the hidden trails that followed the old routes used by the wild herds and the occasional Tusken hunter or traveler. The suns were starting to wane in the sky and I pushed my mount hard, stopping only once to water my eopie and to tend to the wound in my side. A closer inspection showed that there were no broken ribs, but there was one that was certainly cracked and two more that felt bruised. The skin was dark and swollen by the time I stopped for a brief rest. I took a swallow from my canteen and wet my handkerchief, wrung some water out into my eopie's mouth, and used what was left to bathe the bruised skin. It was tender and sore, but the cool water felt good and the swelling was starting to go down. There was a cut on my head from the fight with the Tusken and my throat was ragged and raw, but those were superficial.

It was almost dark when I got back to the house. The suns were sinking below the far hills and the air was already getting cooler. It felt good on the stale sweat that clung to my shirt and clothes, and I knew that both me and my mount were happy to be home. I put my eopie in the corral and forked some feed for him, filled his water trough, and then with my rifle in the crook of my arm I started for the house. There was a light on and I could smell food cooking, and I saw the speeder sitting outside in the yard. I went inside and hung up my rifle and my saddlebags on the pegs that hung on the wall for the purpose. I was just about to start toward my room when Ben came out of the kitchen. He was dressed in his usual robes and had a towel over his shoulder.

"I was wondering when you would get back. You look like you had some trouble."

He pointed at the hand on my ribs and indicated the way that I was favoring my bad side.

"Just a tad. Not nearly as much as you would've had if hadn't got to them first."

"I can only imagine. Dinner is ready, if you're hungry, and as you may have noticed we have a houseguest. Three, actually."

I followed him into the kitchen and saw a kid in farmer's clothes sitting at the table. A golden protocol droid stood a few feet away, mixing something in a bowl on the counter, and in the far corner of the room stood a blue and silver astromech droid. I recognized them right away as the droids that I had seen earlier in the day. I sat down across the table from him and ladled up a plate full of food, suddenly realizing how hungry I was. I hadn't had anything to eat all day. The kid looked me up and down as I came in and took a seat, his eyes lingering on my pistol and knife and at the bloodstains on my shirt and vest. He didn't say anything, but I knew that he had more than a few questions.

I knew at once that this was Luke Skywalker, Owen Lars' nephew. He was a couple of years younger than me and a few inches shorter, about twenty pounds lighter, and he had the kind of sandy hair and smooth face that was always a hit with the ladies. His clothing was all white and beige tones, perfect for deflecting the rays of the harsh suns, and he had the characteristic tan of a moisture farmer. He picked at his food, obviously troubled about something. I, on the other hand, didn't have that problem. Within half an hour I had put away two plates of meat and greens, four cups of java, and a dozen of the sourdough biscuits that Ben was famous for. He said that he got the recipe from an old friend of his who ran a restaurant on Coruscant. Wherever he got it, they were the best damn biscuits that I've ever had.

"Aden, Luke here has come with some very interesting news. It seems that I am needed elsewhere and that some very old friends of mine are in need of my help. These two droids were sent to bring me back. I haven't seen them in many years, although only one of them probably remembers me, and they have brought some very disturbing news."

"What kind of news?"

"My little friend over there, R2-D2, has been given a set of plans for the Empire's latest weapon. These plans are vital to the survival of the Rebellion and must be delivered to the senator from Alderaan. His is an old friend of mine and he has been a great supporter of the Rebellion since the Empire came to power. They have been fighting against the Emperor and his ilk for years, but they have never faced a threat like this before. I must make sure that these plans are safely delivered."

"Wait a minute, the Rebellion and the Empire? As in the Galactic Empire? What does all of this have to do with us? If this is such an important mission, then why would they trust it to a droid and a farm boy? No offense, Luke, but you're not exactly a commando."

Luke started to say something to that, but Ben's lifted hand stopped him. The astro droid chirped and beeped in the corner, obviously taking offense, and the golden droid said something harsh to it and slapped it on the dome.

"There was a mission sent to find me," Ben said, "but they were ambushed by the Empire and their ship was destroyed. These two droids were the only ones to make it off the vessel and onto the planet. At the last minute, the senator sent to retrieve me entrusted the plans to R2 and sent him to find me and complete the mission. I assure you that this is very real, Aden, and that the repercussions of this are enormous. I've seen plans like these before, many years ago during the Clone Wars, and it is nothing to underestimate. The Geonosians tried to build one for the Seperatists, but we stopped them before they could even begin construction. Now it appears that the Empire has acquired the plans and have not only started but completed it. This is a weapon like no other, a mobile space station which contains enough internal firepower to destroy an entire planet with a single blast."

"Impossible."

"I wish you were right. I assure you, it can be done. I have stayed hidden here long enough. I believe it is time for me to return to the old Republic and finish what was started nearly twenty years ago.

"Aden, there are things about me that I have never told you before. You know that I was a Jedi knight in my youth, and that I fought in the Clone Wars, yes? What I did not tell you is that I was a general of the Republic Army and led them in many battles and campaigns against the Seperatists. I was one of the key commanders of the Republic's forces until the Emperor issued Order 66. That was the order for the clones that we commanded to turn on the Jedi and wipe us out in one fell swoop. I told you that I am the last of the Jedi, and now the Jedi are needed more than ever. The time has come for me to leave."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, my whole life was changing before my eyes. I had never known anything but Ben, this cabin, and the way of life to which I had become accustomed. Hunting the wild game, searching for minerals and precious metals, gathering and selling off the water that we found in the few natural pools and springs in the high mountains. Aside from the few years I had spent with my parents, Ben was the only family I had ever known and this house was the only home that I had ever had. In the back of my mind I had always known that the day would come when Ben would leave, or die, or that I would leave to find my own way, but I had never expected it to happen today or in such a manner as this. I sipped my java, feeling it growing cold in the cup, and across the table I could see Luke's face staring down at his plate. No wonder he had lost his appetite. If I had known all this before I sat down, I probably would have lost mine too.

Ben sat in his chair and refilled his cup, drank it, and in his usual calm and nonchalant manner he collected the plates and put them in the washbasin. There were some doughnuts in the oven, which apparently he had been baking, and put a tray of them on the table between us. Any other time I would be tearing into them like a starved dewback, but right now I couldn't find my old appetite for the sweet pastries. I sipped my java and rolled it all over in my mind over and over again, trying to wrap my head around the idea that man who had raised me in a nowhere part of an insignificant backwater planet was now being called away to stop the most powerful empire in the galaxy from building a super weapon. I never would have believed it had it been Ben who told me. Anyone else, and I would have punched them in the jaw after laughing in their lying face.

Half an hour passed with none of us saying a word. The droids left us and we all retired to the main den, taking the java and the doughnuts with us. Eventually I gave in and ate two of the doughnuts, unable to resist such a rare treat, but my heart just wasn't in it like it usually was. Finally I got up and went out to the porch. The house just seemed stuffy and close and I needed to get some air. The night was cold and clear, the stars were out in all their glory, and in the far distance I heard the howls of massifs in the hills. They were usually pack hunters, often kept as pets by the Tuskens, but somewhere out there were two lonely animals calling to each other. I stood and listened to the first one call out into the night, his lonely howl sounding so sad and lonesome in the dark desert until it was answered by his friend.

What would I do now? I knew nothing of the galaxy outside this planet, outside of what I knew. Luke would be right at home out there. He had always had these grand dreams of going off to the Imperial Academy and becoming a hotshot pilot. He was always talking about flying a fighter or a ship of his own or something of the sort. He would do alright. I knew that Ben would take him along when he left. But what about me?

The cabin was a cozy place to live. It had everything a man needed to live out his days in peace and quiet. There were always the Tuskens and the bandits, but a man would always need something to keep him strong and keep him occupied. If Ben left, then I could see him leaving this place to me. I loved the mountains and the desert and quiet, lonesome life that they offered. I could be happy here. I was happy here. This place had been my home for the last twenty years, the only home that I had ever known. But there was something that was missing, something that had been missing for twenty years.

"Aden," Ben said as he came up behind me.

"You really have to stop doing that."

"Soft steps, I suppose. It's a lot to take in, isn't it?"

"I'll say. Why didn't you ever tell me any of that stuff?"

"I told you what you needed to know. I couldn't risk you knowing too much. I had many enemies in my youth, enemies that would gladly hunt me down even this far after the fact. If you would like to come along with us, I would be happy to have you."

"No. I'm not cut out for space travel. My life is here. Besides, I have unfinished business here."

"Yes, I know. I know all about your business."

"You're going to need a transport. I know of a guy in Mos Eisley who might take you, if he's on planet. His name is Han Solo. He flies with a big Wookie named Chewbacca on an old freighter. Not much to look at, but they say it made the Kessel Run in record time and that Solo is the best smuggler around. He works for Jabba the Hutt mostly."

"Yes, most of the villains in that wretched hive of scum work for the Hutts. One of the many, many reasons I have always avoided that particular settlement. I thank you for the advice. Now, about the house and the land . . ."

"I'll take good care of the place."

"I know you will. Aden, I know you have plans. You've had them for a long time. I've tried to dissuade you from them but I know that when I am gone from here that you will go off to pursue them. I would say that I hope you would hold off on them until I came back, but I fear that I may never come back from this."

I didn't like to hear that. Ben had been the closest thing to a father that I had ever had after my own father had died. He had raised me as his own, after his own way, and almost everything I knew I had learned from him.

"I'm leaving you this place. I built it thinking that I would live out the rest of my days here. I expected to live them alone until I found you out there, half dead and alone. I helped you bury your family and I taught you the skills you needed to survive. I fear that I may have taught you too well. You have a Jedi's reflexes, although you are not quite Jedi material. You have too much hate in your heart. You do your best to hide it, but it is there nonetheless. I sense much hatred in you, Aden. Hatred for the men that took your family, hatred for those that ordered it done, and most of all hatred for yourself because you could not stop it. I know you want revenge, and rightly so, but you mustn't give in to your hate. Hatred leads only to pain and to suffering. If you give in to hate then that will lead you to the Dark Side.

"I know you don't believe in the Force, Aden, but the Force is everywhere you look. It is everywhere in everyone and everything. It surrounds us and penetrates us and it guides the course of our lives. If you give in to your hate and do what I know you want to do, then that will lead you to the Dark Side and the dark path. Once you start down the path of the dark side then it will forever dominate your destiny. Remember that, my young friend."

He put a hand on my shoulder and I felt his grip tighten in a fatherly gesture, then he turned went back inside. I was left alone with my thoughts. He was right, of course. Ever since that day back at my family's moisture farm I had been plotting and planning for the time when I would take my revenge on those that took away my mother and father. Not a night went by that I didn't see their faces, hear their screams, or see the men that had murdered them. Ben was also right about the hatred that I carried around. It had burned in my heart for as long as I could remember. It was my hate that defined me, that had made me strong, that had given me the drive to become the man that I was. And it was hatred that told me what I must do now. Ben was gone, I was free to go my own way, and tomorrow he would leave me to my vengeance. I tossed away the remains of my cold java and went to my bed. I would need a good night's sleep, for tomorrow I would go hunting.


End file.
